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5
UNIT3
Reading Passage
10
15
20
20
25
30
Listening
When important events are happening around the world, most people turn to traditional media
sources, such as CNN and BBC,¹ for their news. However, during the invasion of Iraq by the
United States and its allies in early 2003, a significant number of people followed the war from the
point of view of an anonymous² Iraqi citizen who called himself "Salam Pax" (salam means "peace"
in Arabic, and pax means "peace" in Latin).
Salam Pax wrote a diary about everyday life in Baghdad during the war, and posted it on his web
site. Pax's online diary was a kind of web site known as a "blog." Blogs, short for "web-logs," are
online diaries usually kept by individuals, but sometimes they are written by companies and other
groups of people. They are a rapidly growing type of web site on the Internet. There are estimated
to be several hundred thousand blogs on the Internet, and with the popularity of other social media
sites, the number of people writing online about their lives continues to grow.
may find
A blog differs from a traditional web site in several ways. Most importantly, it is updated much more
regularly. Many blogs are updated every day, and some are updated several times a day. Also, most
blogs use special software or web sites which are specifically aimed at bloggers, so you do not need
to be a computer expert to create your own blog. This means that ordinary people who
computers difficult to use can easily set up and start writing their own blog. In 2003, the Internet
company AOL³ introduced their own blogging service, enabling its 35 million members to quickly
and easily start blogging.
There are many different kinds of blogs. The most popular type is an online diary of links, where
the blog writer surfs the Internet and then posts links to sites or news articles that they find interesting,
with a few comments about each one. Other types are personal diaries, where the writer talks
about their life and feelings. Sometimes these blogs can be very personal.
There is another kind of blogging, called "moblogging," short for "mobile blogging." Mobloggers
use cell phones to take photo's, which are posted instantly to the Internet. When the content and
images posted online involve news subjects, mobloggers become citizen journalists. In fact, the
Korean web site OhMyNews was a well known source for articles from international citizen
journalists. However, in 2010, OhMyNews stopped posting new articles. Instead, it is now a blog
site where citizen journalists can choose what makes the headlines, or just share ideas about how
regular people are changing the news world.
Anyone who visits the web site of a big media company can clearly see how the idea of blogging
has changed the reporting of news. Quite often, a list of reader comments follow news articles. It
seems that the news is becoming less like a report or a lecture, and more like a conversation, where
anyone can join in.
CNN, BBC Cable News Network, British Broadcasting Corporation
anonymous not named; unknown
3 AOL America Online
